The Twilight of Ideologies

In this classic study, now available in English for the first time, the late Spanish philosopher Gonzalo Fernández de la Mora reconsiders the antithesis of pathos and logos in the political realm. In real life, he postulates, ideology has mostly undesirable effects: social tension, extremism, pugnacity, and the substitution of myths for facts. Consistent with this observation, political life in the second half of the twentieth century was ruthlessly rationalized. Opposing political programs seemed to be converging. Religion seemed to be becoming less important. Nationalism was yielding to cosmopolitanism. From a conceptual perspective, this book evaluates prevalent ideologies as members of the same class of degraded intellectual substance, debased specifically for the consumption of the masses with little or no regard for the consequences. While not all societies have regulated ideological mindsets, current events show that the causal link between ideology and social degradation is as true now as it was when Fernández de la Mora first wrote about it and will remain so in the future.

Tom Burns (b. 1948) is a well-known journalist and essayist brought up between Britain and Spain. He graduated in Modern History from the University of Oxford and was Deputy President and Communications Director for the Recoletos Comunicación Group. Since 1970, he has developed a distinguished career in journalism, including work in Madrid as foreign correspondent for the Financial Times, Washington Post, and Newsweek. Currently, he is a director at Eurocofín, a leading corporate communications and financial consultancy company, as well as a contributor to the Spanish newspaper El Mundo. In 2001, Burns was appointed to the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his work promoting Spanish-British relations. He is the author of numerous books on Spanish state and society.